Woodstock has been beating the winter blues with hot jazz. For the past month, the town has paid tribute to Louis Armstrong with music, drama, art and poems based on his life and career.
As part of the town-wide festival, Woodstock High School students tapped their toes onstage and in the audience for Ambassador Satch, a production blending archival film clips and live performance.
The show opens with a local Dixieland band called The Almost Legendary Thundering Muskrats playing When You’re Smiling, the Whole World Smiles With You. Armstrong was nicknamed “Satchmo” because his wide grin reminded people of an open satchel.
But that smile sometimes hid sadness and anger. In a documentary in Armstrong's archives, the musician talks about his poverty-stricken childhood in New Orleans. His mother, Mayann, raised him alone, after his father ran off.
“She never envied no one or anything they might have. I guess I inherited that part of life from Mayann,” he says.
"The power of his public presence forced whites to re-think their racism whether they knew it or not. He blew his horn, and called humanity together. That was his style, his gift." - Woodstock High School SpeakChorus
Armstrong drew adoring crowds yet also faced racism, even after he got famous. Woodstock students have been exploring that history of intolerance. The high school’s SpeakChorus created a piece called "Silver Sounds of Justice."
“The power of his public presence forced whites to re-think their racism whether they knew it or not. He blew his horn, and called humanity together. That was his style, his gift,” the chorus chants, sometimes in unison, sometimes as spirited solos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWtDzGrEvjs
The festival has also spawned poems and collages — an art form mastered by Armstrong himself. And the high school jazz quintet has been learning his music.
Lily Denmeade, a senior at Woodstock High, sings “Dream a Little Dream of Me” during the show. “It’s a song that I’m been listening to since I was a little kid," she says. "My grandmother used to sing it to me when I was younger."
Wearing a sparkly black T-shirt in the front row of the school auditorium, independent producer Alina Bloomgarden applauds loudly for these kids. Bloomgarden divides her time between Woodstock and New York City. With help from the Armstrong House and Museum, she’s produced lots of shows about Armstrong at the Lincoln Center. She says she’s thrilled at the way this small community has pulled off an ambitious, multi-media, month-long tribute.
“This whole series is called 'Louis Armstrong, Playing It Forward,' and the idea is that what he had inspires all of us to continue on our lives, musically, but also just as people,” Bloomgarden says.
"The idea is that what he had inspires all of us to continue on our lives, musically, but also just as people." - Alina Bloomgarden
Among the inspired is local musician Fred Haas. He directs an educational non-profit called Interplay Jazz and Arts, and plays saxophone with the Thundering Muskrats. Haas says Armstrong was one of the first jazz musicians to think of a band as a free-form creative community.
“Because even in just the context of his group, a lot of spontaneous improvisation goes on in between all of the players as well as different soloists being featured," Haas says. "Louis Armstrong [was] one of the first real improvisers to be able to stand up in front of a band and play cogent improvised solos."
“I see skies of blue ... It’s a wonderful world,” Armstong croons on screen towards the end of the production. “There is two kinds of music,” the musician once said. “The good and the bad. I play the good kind.”
Eventually, Producer Bloomgarden hopes to take the bootstrap story of Ambassador Satch on the road to other Vermont schools.
Satchmuration continues through the weekend in Woodstock with more performances, lectures, meals, and a parade.
